Michelle Angela Ortiz Is Using Public Art to Honor the Immigrant Experience

If you’re not an immigrant yourself and don’t know any personally, it’s easy to forget that there are more than 11 million undocumented individuals in the United States. You probably pass them on the street and stand in line with them at the supermarket, but you wouldn't know it. And in many American cities, you're more likely to come across a memorial to a Confederate soldier than public recognition of the immigrant population.

Michelle Angela Ortiz is a visual artist and a child of immigrants who grew up in a diverse community in Philadelphia. The city is filled with memorials and monuments—but none of them represent Ortiz's experience there. "The images you see in Philadelphia are about Philadelphia as the city of brotherly love or as the city that marks our independence," she says. "But it’s not freedom for everyone or brotherly love for everyone."

There are thousands of undocumented immigrants in her city, each of them living in fear of deportation, but this isn't reflected in the city's public spaces. Ortiz is trying to change that, and she's doing so with public art that depicts the immigrant experience and is made in collaboration with the immigrant community. And these are not demure little paintings tucked away in a back alley. These are large, in-your-face murals placed in crowded public spaces. Just by being there, they force each passerby to reckon with immigration.

For one project, Familias Separadas, she worked with undocumented youth and families to develop large-scale, temporary murals documenting the stories of immigrant families. The one pictured above, which was installed over the compass rose at City Hall, tells the story of Maria, whose husband lived in Philadelphia until he was deported. He tried to cross the border again to reunite with his family but was caught by ICE agents in Texas and served a three-year jail sentence in California. He's now back in Mexico, and Maria is living in Philadelphia and caring for five children on her own.

Another piece from the project enlisted 30 volunteers from the community to help paint this mural on the road in front of the ICE building in Philadelphia. Included is a quote from an undocumented mother named Ana, who was detained at Berks Family Residential Center—a detention center for immigrant mothers and children—and was unjustly deported back to Guatemala until a judge ordered that she be brought back to the U.S. "Just the act of creating this piece was such a beautiful, magical moment," Ortiz says. "We were able to stand in front of this building that represents fear and be fearless."

Se Siente El Miedo features an immigrant named Cruz and was installed on Washington Avenue, where he rode his bike to work each day. Cruz left his home in Mexico at age 14 to find work in America and was detained by ICE 20 years later.

RecentlyOrtiz was awarded a Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Fellowship, which she plans to use to expand on her work that deals with the criminalization of the Latin American community and letting families share their stories of detention and deportation. She's especially interested in Berks, the controversial detention center for mothers and children.